The Fabulous Boomer Boys (radio)

Torque, Beemer & Tower

As if the media hasn’t always been saturated by the overstated concerns of the Baby Boom generation, in the early 90s there was a talk show on WHK called The Fabulous Boomer Boys. Three guys, Stuart Fenton, Bruce Bogart and Bob Snyder, friends since childhood, had their own show to address issues which they felt had been overlooked. 

It was called “the first radio show dedicated to the Baby Boomer generation” which was utter nonsense. Since 1946 absolutely everything that exists has been dedicated to the Baby Boomer generation.

However, they were pretty fun guys. Imagine Car Talk except with Cleveland accents and the topic was, well, themselves. Lots of camaraderie, self-effacing humor and laughing at their own jokes.

Just after we opened The Taming of the Shrew, Guerrilla was invited to participate. Bruce Bogart met Beemer while she was working at Dillard’s at Westgate and asked about her Guerrilla pin. He was truly interested in our theater company, even more so when he learned that Boomers were often the focus of our abuse.

Bruce: Well we’re lucky this evening, we’ve got in our studio Torque —

Torque: Hi.

Bruce: — Tower —

Tower: Hello.

Bruce: — and Beemer —

Beemer: Hello.

Bruce: — of the Guerrilla Theater Company. These guys have a theater company — where is it located?

Torque: It’s located downtown, in funky up-and-coming Tremont — it’s right next to The Flats.

Bruce: And it’s a safe neighborhood, right?

Torque: Uh no.

Beemer: It’s getting there.

Bruce: It’s getting there, and one of the reasons it’s getting there is because of the Guerrilla Theater. What they do is, they have this show, and what Torque told me is that they poke fun at our generation with their theatrical productions.

Torque: That’s right.

Bruce: For those of you at home, these people are 24 years old, they’re not exactly Baby Boomers, and they have the audacity to poke fun at our generation.

Tower: Sometimes all you Boomer folks act as though we don’t have any brains at all. You use tactics like the “Just Say No” campaign. Rather than explaining a problem and how it might affect us, you just tell us not to do it. Political correctness is another example.

Torque: You come up with no solutions, just knee-jerk decisions and you want everyone to abide by the decision that you make.

Beemer: You know what you want the end product to be but you don’t want to take the time to reach it so you just think up a catch phrase like “Just Say No” and that’s supposed to take care of it.

Bob: Do you think there are any Baby Boomers like me who “live for today” instead of people like Stuart who like to plan their life?

Torque: Yes, I do, and I respect them, and most of them come to see Guerrilla Theater Company, which brings up another subject which is that we are currently putting up our production of "The Taming of the Shrew" and that runs every Friday and Saturday night sat 8 o’clock and Sundays at 3 o’clock.

Bruce: Okay, you guys come here, you put down my generation, you put down our basic listening audience, I wanna know what you guys would do to make this a better world.

Torque: You mean, as opposed to “making love, not war”?

Bruce: Whatever.

Bob: That slogan I like, forget the “just say no to drugs.”

Bruce: “Make love, not war,” that’s not your generation’s slogan.

Tower: No, our generation says “Make love, not divorce.”

(General groans from the Boomer Boys.)

Bob: That’s a touchy subject for our generation.

Bruce: But I’m not hearing any solutions, I’m hearing slogans from you, too.

Torque: That’s the point, instead of the quick solutions, like divorce, we’re talking about working things out, about working our problems out, not the sound bite kind of answers you get on radio, but going ahead and taking some responsibility.

Bob: Are you married?

Torque: Me? No.

Bob: Then how can you talk like that?

Tower: I’m married.

Stuart: Tower is married, he said before the show he’s been married for six months, and you call yourself a househusband, right?

Tower: Right.

Stuart: Your wife supports you, makes the money, you take care of the house — how long is that going to last?

Tower: How long is that going to last?

Bob: Househusband, isn’t that a Baby Boomer idea anyway?

Tower: Oh you wish.

Bob: Thanks to the Baby Boomers, Tower, someone like you can let their wife go out to work —

Tower: I don’t have to let her do anything, we have this wonderful relationship, it’s not what I give her permission to do.

Bruce: What does she do?

Tower: She’s a systems designer.

Bruce: What’s that in English?

Tower: She makes computer programs.

Bob: Computers, another thing the Boomers created.

Tower: Shyeah, but you don’t understand them.

Stuart: My turn, to talk about sex, with Beemer.

Torque: You want to talk about sex with Beemer?

Stuart: What about sex in your plays, do you talk about the Sexual Revolution?

Beemer: Do you mean gender issues?

Stuart: I mean about how Baby Boomers made sex free, and accessible to all people, and how it’s looked about differently now.

Beemer: You mean “Free Love” and “Expressing Yourself”?

Tower: Done that.

Stuart: Aren’t you glad the Baby Boomers opened that up for you?

Beemer: Yeah, but there’s a difference between free love and having a hundred million different partners and having free love with your own personal sexuality.

Torque: We’ve got diseases now, you gave us Free Love, thanks, now we’ve got all these things to worry about, we’re trying to figure out how to come up with one partner when all of our role models say hey, it’s okay to have as many partners as you want, there’s no need to be anything but promiscuous.

Stuart: Woo!

Bruce: You guys are really down on us!

Tower: We’re getting the big thumbs up from the slackers in the control booth.

Bruce: You people are fascinating to me because I see in you a lot of my thoughts twenty years ago when I looked at my father’s generation. And I wonder what makes you think that twenty years from now someone isn’t gonna laugh at you and say, you people think you have all the answers, you don’t.

Torque: I hope they do laugh at us.

Beemer: I think that’s the difference between our generations — you had the same thoughts that we do now, but we have the drive to carry them on as we grow and do the work, so that our children will be even more motivated to continue that.

Bruce: You think we didn’t have the same determination twenty years ago?

Beemer: Doesn’t show now.

(Hoot and groans.)

Bob: Who got these guests tonight?

- scene - 

Play a Day: The Return of the Shrew

John Poole

For Tuesday I read The Return of the Shrew by John Poole, and available at New Play Exchange.

In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, this sequel to his The Taming of the Shrew! And don't tell me yesterday was the anniversary of the Bard's birth, they just like to say that because he was christened on April 26, and he died fifty-four years later on April 23, which lends a nice symmetry but isn't a thing that ever actually happens, dying on your birthday (unless you're Cassius, yes, okay) but it could have been yesterday, it could be tomorrow, let's just say it's today.

So! In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, this sequel to his The Taming of the Shrew!

Wait, first, I want to remind everyone I wrote a one-hour prequel to Much Ado About Nothing which is currently available at YouthPLAYS, Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick), which Time Out New York said has, "beautiful turns of language and a touch of weirdness." A perfect one-hour play for your university, high school, or community theater.

However, though Much Ado is largely prose and Double Heart entirely in verse, Taming of the Shrew is largely verse and Return of the Shrew is largely prose! It is not matter because Poole manages to be faithful to the original and explode its conventions at the same time, and this is welcome news to anyone who finds the original a little hard to take.

Poole has crafted a light and frisky vaudeville, exploring the unseen aftereffects of Katherina's notorious closing speech Utilizing slapstick, groan-worthy puns and absurdly authentic plot devices, he conveys a much more realistic and satisfying approach to love and relationships than is found in Shakespeare's original. A swift and silly sequel -- Huzzah!

Play a Day: Encanta

Shawn C. Harris

For Wednesday I read Encanta by Shawn C. Harris, available at New Play Exchange.

This is an absurd tropical adventure with amorous pirates, heartbroken witches, and murderous church ladies. Our heroes literally dance on the edge of a volcano.

They dance on the edge of a volcano.

The stage directions make the audience complicit in the action of the play. We are beachcombers, members of a costume party, a mob of kidnappers. I want to see the production where these things actually happen.

The piece wears its inspirations proudly, though I am curious as the whether the pirate Penzima and the sorceress Katrina are an intentional nod to Petruchio and Katherine, because they certainly could be.

This morning I woke from a particularly vivid dream; we were in a small club where Bryan Ferry was performing, He was seriously old and unshaven, and writhing on the floor. He found a fat potato chip and crushed it in his fingers as a metaphor about love.

The Taming of the Shrew (1993)

Guerrilla Theater Company

The Taming of the Shrew
Tablework, May 1993.

We sat at the long high school table, in the middle of the space. All signs of 'You Have the Right to Remain Silent!' had been stripped away. It was May, and it was starting to get warm. A large industrial fan kept the air in the place moving.

We were reading the famous "wooing scene" where Petruchio first meets Katherina and they make fun of each other. In particular, Petruchio keeps jamming on her name; he says everyone calls her "super-dainty Kate" because that's actually the opposite of the kind of thing everyone really does call her.

"'My super-dainty Kate,'" I read, "meaning my Kate who is extremely light, which is the opposite of what everyone else in town --"

"Go on," Torque agreed.

"'For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,'" I read, "which is a pun on the word 'dainty' which means something that tastes good, and the cakes which were called 'kates' and so, Kate --"

"All cakes were called kates?" Torque asked.

"Some cakes were called kates," I said.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

I said, "Everyone knows that."

"Did you look it up?" he asked, "are you sure it means cake?"

"I know they mean cake," I said.

Pause.

"Look it up," he said.

I tried not to sigh as Beemer slid me the humongous first volume of the portable Oxford English Dictionary.

"While you're at it," he said, "look up dainty."

"'Cate'" I said, "it's under 'c' ... a choice article of food, a dainty, a delicacy."

"So they both mean cake!" he said.

"Yes," I said. "'Take this of me --"

"Did you know dainty also meant cake?"

"I think I did," I said, "I'm not sure. 'Take this of me' ... Shall I continue?"

"Please."

"'Take this of me, Kate of my consolation' -- meaning 'accept what I am about the say as truth, Kate who consoles me' --"

"What?"

"You want me to look up consolation?" I asked.

"No," Torque said, "the first bit. 'Take this of me' ... take what of me?"

"What he's about to say," I said. "He's about to make a promise and he wants her to accept it."

"You sure he's not offering her cake?"

"What?"

"He's just made a double-pun on the word cake," Torque insisted, "is it possible he offers her some cake?"

I was stymied. "Uhb. Where would he, uh. What?"

"Maybe he pulls it out of his pocket."

"That's ridiculous."

"He's making jokes about cake, he says 'take this of me,' he wants her to take something from him --"

"His word."

"I don't get that from the text," Torque argued.

"But you get that he slings a piece of cake at her?"

"A Twinkie," Torque decided.

I sat dumb-founded.

"We're trying to ... That's ridiculous. Is that what Shakespeare meant, that Petruchio, in the midst of wooing Katherina, offers her a Twinkie?"

Torque leaned forward in his chair. "You have to convince me, through the text, that he didn't."

An '80s-infused' production of The Taming of the Shrew continues at Great Lakes Theater through October 29, 2011. There are no Twinkies, though there is one Whatchamacallit bar.